Carphone Warehouse Kills Tiscali UK Brand

Carphone Warehouse, following its May 2009 acquisition of Tiscali UK, has officially axed the Tiscali brand name and has merged its customer base with Talk Talk, an ISP owned by Carphone Warehouse.

The company, which also owns AOL UK and Opal, had acquired Tiscali’s UK arm in a £236 million deal.

The announcement was made by Carphone Warehouse CEO, Charles Dunstone, who wrote on the Talk Talk blog that "From today the Tiscali brand is no more and we’re committed to giving all of our customers absolute clarity about who we are the services we provide and the prices we charge."

Welcoming "all Tiscali customers to Talk Talk", the Mr. Dustone also added that the company was currently reviewing the pricing tariffs, as a result of which, some customers will see "a reduction in their monthly bills", some will see no change and some might see a slight increase in their bill.

However, some of the brands owned by Tiscali UK, such as Pipex, Freedom2surf and Nildram will not be forced to change their brand names even if their parent company has been dissolved.

Carphone Warehouse incidentally has emerged as UK's largest residential internet services provider with around 4 million users all over Britain and is the largest independent mobile phone retailer in Europe with over 1700 stores across the continent.

Our Comments

So it is good bye Tiscali and welcome (again) Carphone Warehouse. The retailing giant has managed to acquire a number of significant assets over the years and has now become the biggest consumer broadband provider in the UK. We expect big things from CW this year as it pushes forward its venture with Best Buy,